1. Field of the Invention
The present inventions relate to a media server, an more specifically to an interactive media server that distributes image sequences to multiple clients.
2. Description of Background Art
With the growth of processing capability, networking, and bandwidth, it has become possible to send and receive large amounts of data to a vast array of locations. One benefit of these advances has been in the area of video content. Computers can now receive, store, manipulate, and transmit the large amounts of data necessary for remote viewing of video, whether live or stored. For example, in the area of security cameras, output from a camera (such as a wide-angle camera) can be sent to a station where one or more clients can view the image sequences captured by the camera.
Such systems are typically hard-wired so that the client sees the unmodified output of the camera. For example, in a closed-circuit security system, several clients may be linked to view the output of several different security cameras. However, this requires a large redundancy in hardware so that a large number of views can be displayed.
Advances in wide-angle image capture devices permit processing of captured data, for example, to modify the view by changing its coordinate space (or otherwise modifying a warped, non-Cartesian view) in deference to a request received from a client. For example, such systems are variously described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/837,325, “Multiple View Processing in Wide Angle Video Camera,” U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/837,019, “Method for Simultaneously Displaying Multiple Views for Video Surveillance,” and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/861,021, “Network Camera Supporting Multiple IP Addresses,” all of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
Interactive Media Server
In an example class of embodiments, the present innovations include an interactive media server which enables multiple clients to independently and interactively extract views from an image source. In preferred embodiments, the present innovations are practiced in the context of an interactive media server and multiple light weight clients which operate independently to interact with the media server and extract views from a single (or multiple) image source(s). The media server of the present innovations can be virtual, for example, distributed across multiple physical locations, or it can be localized. The media server can interact with a fixed number of interactive clients (for example, across a network connection such as a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN) or the Internet) in proportion to a number of image processor nodes included in the media server. For example, in one embodiment, the image processor nodes are assigned to clients in a dedicated fashion. In other embodiments, clients are grouped according to similarities or other characteristics, and are served as groups. In this example embodiment, larger numbers of clients can be served. Other features and advantages of the present innovations are described below.